For example, the first U.S. merchant ship arrived in Kolkata in 1787. The company bought opium from local traders and later directly from farmers, and sold it at auction in Calcutta. The agents of the East India Company first visited the provinces of Bengal and Bihar for trade during the period of Ibrahim Khan (ca 1617–1624), the Subahdar (Governor) of Bengal at the time of Mughal Emperor Jahangir. Acre­age under wheat in 1931 reached the lowest point ever recorded. The fact that many of the Hindus in this latter group were linked to the local Congress organisation and dominated the mainstream nationalist movement in Bengal from Calcutta led to attempts to thwart Huq's activities and fed into the tragic decline in communal relations that savaged Calcutta in 1946 and 1947 (see Kenneth McPherson, "The Muslim Microcosm: the Muslims of Calcutta 1918–1935", Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1973). In the 16th century Britain began to establish overseas colonies. Peace treaty was again offered by the governor at the end of December 1686 but it was mainly to buy out time for attack and by February 1687 a large troop of Shaista Khan's army arrived at Hooghly to drive the Company out of Bengal. By this time Aurangzeb was camping at Visapur and was much aware of the fact that he was losing revenues from the Company trade and the Company ships could cause him much trouble by stopping the pilgrimage to Mecca since they controlled the sea-route. Each had to be approved by the central government in New Delhi.. Trade with other nations also grew. Many distinguished scholars, English and Bengali, such as Henry Thomas Colebrooke, James Prinsep and Pandit Radhakanta Sarman would grace the society's meetings and publications over the following century, vastly enriching knowledge of India's culture and past.[18]. The British took advantage of this and the First Anglo-Sikh War broke The rebels were easily crushed by the Mughal government, but the settlers’ defensive structure of brick and mud remained and came to be known as Fort William. The fort was built on the bank of river Hooghly at Sutanuti with mortar brought from Madras, completed in ca 1701 and was called Fort William after King William III of England. ... which had long been under British … Siraj ud-Daula escaped but was later caught and killed by Miran, the son of Mir Jafar. The Black Hole of Calcutta was a small prison in Fort William, India, and became the site of a tragedy where many British prisoners supposedly died on the evening of 20 June 1756. Ibrahim Khan allowed them to protect their own factories, but did not allow any fortification explicitly. Then he was ordered to proceed to Dhaka. It took almost 20 years for the British to plan and accomplish, under the architectural skills of Luytens and Baker. Furthermore, Nanda Kumar was a Brahman, and his hanging caused widespread dismay and outrage in Calcutta. The institution was initially affiliated with the University of Calcutta for examination. The servants of the company, who asked for permission to fortify their trading post, or factory, were given permission in general terms to defend themselves. However the peace was broken again when some Company troops misbehaved with Shaista Khan's troops in Hooghly on 28 October 1686 for which the former were severely beaten by the latter. The river at this point was also wide and deep; the only disadvantage was that the marshes to the east and swamps within the area made the spot unhealthy. The British had established a port and trading base at Calcutta in the 1690s and built Fort William to guard it. From there much of it was smuggled to Canton in China by foreign traders, eventually leading to the First Opium War (1839–1842). British merchants and aristocrats held shares in this joint stock company. It took almost 20 years for the British to plan and accomplish, under the architectural skills of Luytens and Baker. Although it was not completed to the southern end of the settlement, it marked the city’s eastern boundary. India accepted the suzerainty of the British authority coming under its iron grip. A number of Europeans were imprisoned in a small lockup popularly known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, and many died. Why were the farmers under british … 1. The Elgin Road residence of Subhas Chandra Bose in Calcutta was the place from where he escaped the British to reach Germany during the Second World War. But then war broke out between rival Indian princes, and the French interfere making the Indians trade with France (and not Britain). This also fostered the Bengal Renaissance,[citation needed] an awakening of modern liberal thinking in 19th century Bengal, and which gradually percolated to the rest of India. Citing non-existent reasons, he attacked Murshidabad, having previously reached an agreement with Mir Jafar to install him on the musnud of Bengal. Don't worry! In 1773 Bombay (now Mumbai) and Madras (now Chennai) became subordinate to the government at Fort William. The farmer misunderstood due to language problems and thought that he was referring as to when he harvested his paddy. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. He was able to successfully treat her burns and in reward the Emperor allowed the company to establish factory at Pipili, Odisha, and for the first time English ships arrived at an eastern port. British agriculture did not fare well during the period either. At the start of this seemingly impossible battle, generals Rai Durlav and Iar Latif held their armies together, but in an act of treachery Mir Jafar led his troops away from the battlefield, and the remaining army led by Mirmadan and Mohanlal was defeated. By 1696, when a rebellion broke out in the nearby district of Burdwan, the Mughal provincial administration had become friendly to the growing settlement. Capital of British India. Shaista Khan went after them in Dhaka, captured them and put them behind bars. [citation needed] At the same time the admiral opened fire and burnt down 500 houses; property losses were about thirty lacs of rupees. This area around Fort William—Calcutta—became the seat of the British province known as the Bengal Presidency. The presence of these merchants may have been to some extent responsible for Charnock’s choice of the site. One thousand British settlers evacuated, including the military commanders, leaving one hundred or so behind. In 1750, Calcutta had a population of 120,000. This was the old Fort William and construction for a new one (the present one) started after Siraj Ud-Daulah attacked Fort William in 1756. In 1985 Rajiv Gandhi referred to Calcutta as a "dying city" because of the social and political traumas. Jones worked closely with the pandits of the Kalighat Temple, together with the local ulema, in translating and producing new editions of rare and forgotten texts. The three villages, in particular Kalikata, where Calcutta is located, came into the possession of the British East India Company in 1690 and some scholars like to date its beginnings as a major city from the construction of Fort William by the British in 1698, though this is debated (see the court ruling in "Name and origins" above). Having installed Manikchand as the ruler of Alinagar, Siraj returned to Murshidabad. The most accepted view is that it comes from the Hindu goddess Kali and the original name was KaliKshetra, "the place of Kali". The East India Company chose the place for a trade settlement. On June 20, 1756, Siraj-Ud-Daullah, who was the Nawab of Bengal, attacked the city and captured the Fort William which was fortified by East India Company earlier; Calcutta was re-captured by Robert Clive in 1757 when the British defeated Siraj-ud-daullah on the battle-field of Plassey Meanwhile, the Third Carnatic War was starting in the south. The renaming of cities in India started in 1947 following the end of the British imperial period.Several changes were controversial, and not all proposed changes were implemented. And, for good measure, he got parliamentary approval to bestow the new title ‘Empress of India’ upon Queen Victoria in 1876. This common pairing of the goddess Kali standing on her husband, the god Shiva, illustrates the importance Tantra places on feminine creative power (shakti).Shiva is a shava (corpse) without the feminine presence of Shakti.. Luck favored him because of an unexpected event. Others note the British takeover did not make any sharp break with the past. The British Joint Stock Company, as it was known earlier, was founded by John Watts and George White for trade with Asian nations in the south and south-east. Charnock had previously had disputes with officials of the Mughal Empire at the river port of Hugli (Hooghly) and had been obliged to leave, after which he attempted unsuccessfully to establish himself at other places down the river. The servants of the company, under the company’s flag, carried on a duty-free private trade. The city has also experienced a growth in the manufacturing sector. The EIC would be forced out of India, unless something changed; 8 Robert Clive Conquers India(See pages 34-38 for These incidents are documented in numerous records of the East India Company and by several authors [Bruce 1810 (Vol I and II), Marshman Vol I, Unknown 1829; see references below]. taraknathhati6733 taraknathhati6733 04.06.2020 History Secondary School +5 pts. There were many factors at play, and we will dive into some of the major ones below. Despite being almost totally destroyed by a cyclone, in which 60,000 died, on 5 October 1864, Calcutta grew, mostly in an unplanned way, in the next 150 years from 117,000 to 1,098,000 inhabitants (including suburbs), and now has a metropolitan population of approximately 14.6 million. The British Empire was one of the largest colonial empires in history, which is a masterful feat, given the country's comparatively small size. At the same time their saltpetre trade was disrupted by another rival English company. From 1772 to 1911, Calcutta was the capital of British India. Gandhi was part of … His residence in Hooghly was secured with soldiers obtained from Madras. Log in. When the Mughal officials, not wishing to lose what they had gained from the English company’s commerce, permitted Charnock to return once more, he chose Calcutta as the seat of his operations. Exactly what British life in 18 th century Calcutta was like varied. In 1764 he had been appointed collector of Burdwan in place of Warren Hastings, which resulted in a long-standing enmity between the two men. There were just over 11 million acres in cultivation in 1914 (in England and Wales). Join now. The beginnings of British political sway over India may be traced to the battle of Plassey in 1757, when the English East India Company’s forces defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal. Captain Heath arrived in October 1688 in Bengal, took all of company persons on board, set sail to Balasore on 8 November 1688. At that time India was under British rule. The Calcutta High Court ruled in 2003[7] that Job Charnock, the Englishman generally believed to be the founder of the Calcutta, is not the founder of the city and that hence Kolkata has no birthday. The British East India Company was formed in 1599 under a charter granted by Queen Elizabeth in 1600. The lessons learnt there were profitably applied in Bengal. Moreover, before the coming of the English, three local villages—Sutanati, Kalikata, and Gobindapore, which were later to become parts of Calcutta—had been chosen as places to settle by Indian merchants who had migrated from the silted-up port of Satgaon, farther upstream. This conference heralded the birth of The Indian National Congress. Shaista Khan allowed them to remain in Bengal, however to be limited only to Uluberia, a small town on the bank of river Hooghly south of Sutanuti, where they were allowed to make a port and do business from there, but their war ships were strictly not allowed to enter Hooghly. [20] The centre of company control over the whole of Bengal from 1757, Calcutta underwent rapid industrial growth from the 1850s, especially in the textile sector, despite the poverty of the surrounding region. 2 The prestigious University of the Punjab, also in Lahore, was the fourth university established by the colonials in South Asia, in the year 1882. While he was returning to Delhi, Englishmen sent with him a request to the Emperor to obtain a special firman to do business forever in Bengal; the Emperor was pleased to provide them the Firman and the occasion was celebrated with a 300 gun salute at Hooghly. Still, the British refused to stop building. The British Empire began in its formative years in the sixteenth century and flourished and grew dramatically, lasting until the twentieth century. It was often dependent upon a person’s job or status within the East India Company (EIC). Labelled the "Cultural Capital of India", "The City of Processions", "The City of Palaces", and the "City of Joy", Kolkata has also been home to prominent people such as, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Rani Rashmoni, Amartya Sen, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Keshub Chandra Sen, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Sarada Devi, Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, Sri Aurobindo, Subhas Chandra Bose, Satyendra Nath Bose, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, Paramahansa Yogananda, Anil Kumar Gain, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Jibanananda Das, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Mother Teresa, Satyajit Ray, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Ustad Vilayat Khan , Pandit Ravi Shankar and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay Problems related to rapid urbanization started to plague Kolkata from the 1653s and the city remains an example of the urbanization challenges of the developing nations. On 29 January 1780, Hickey's Bengal Gazette or the Calcutta General Advertiser became the first newspaper to be printed in India, and is an invaluable chronicle of the social life of Anglo-Indian society in Calcutta. [14] Five years after this incident, in 1780, relations between Warren Hastings and Philip Francis deteriorated to such an extent that the two fought a duel in the grounds of Belvedere (now the National Library) on the road to the suburb of Alipore. While not in a position to fight against the Governor's troops, two Company agents were sent to Dhaka to plead to the governor to allow them to return to Sutanuti and build a fort there. This was especially true in the old bases of British trade, such as Calcutta, Madras or Bombay, where a new Indian intelligentsia had begun to take root. With this friendly invitation, Mr. Job Charnock with 30 soldiers returned to Sutanuti on 24 August 1690 and hoisted the Company standard on the banks of river Hooghly, thus beginning a new era of Company involvement in Bengal. In the mid-1980s, Bombay overtook Calcutta as India's most populous city. Until recently, it was believed that Job Charnock, an agent of the East India Company, had founded this city. On the fateful day of 23 June 1757, 23 miles away from Murshidabad in the mango groves of Palashi, the armies met at the Battle of Plassey. After the territorial conquest of Bengal in 1757, the British East India Company pursued a monopoly on production and export of opium from India. The next year, the company began developing the city as a Presidency City. Log in. The rent-roll of Akbar, the 16th century Mughal emperor, and the work of a Bengali poet, Bipradas Pipilai, of the late 15th century, both make mention of the city's early name's being Kolikata, from which Kolkata/Calcutta derive.[4]. According to Indian Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, India was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world — and then the British showed up. That is why the British impact was abiding and lasting on the Indian people. In fact, within three months about half of Charnock's soldiers died and the remaining half were ready to be hospitalized. The earlier British struggle with the French in south India had been but a dress rehearsal. In examining why the British never colonized Nepal, it is imperative to first clarify the nature of British rule in the subcontinent, and how it varied from preexisting state formations like that of the Gorkhas. History. It had fallen to 9,833,000 acres in 1930. Revolutionary organisations like the Jugantar and the Anushilan Samiti were formed with the goal of using force against the British rulers. They left Balasore on 13 December for Chittagong, reached there on 17 December, found the Governor's fortification too strong to destroy and decided to wait until his demands are answered by the governor. Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) is a city in eastern India. In 1695 the town of Hooghly was seized by Sobha Singh along with an unknown Afghan Rahim Khan, and the English at Sutanuti requested from the governor to use their own armed protection for their factories when their factories were surrounded by the enemy. These documents tell the story of how the English were severely beaten and wiped out from Bengal several times by the forces of the Mughal Emperor and how each time they came back to Bengal to continue their trade. Poverty existed in India before the British, thanks in part to constant war, food shortages, and the caste system, but in general Indian society took care of everyone. The British Raj (/ r ɑː dʒ /; from rāj, literally, "rule" in Sanskrit and Hindustani) was the rule by the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent from 1858 to 1947. The British Empire comprised of Britain, the 'mother country', and the colonies, countries ruled to some degree by and from Britain. Ask your question. [24][25]) Calcutta did not just compete but was once a much larger financial centre than Bombay. Rival Dutch, French, and other European settlements were higher up the river on the west bank, so that access from the sea was not threatened, as it was at the port of Hugli. The bedrock of the Mughal empire was laid in 1526 by Zahiruddin Babur. Calcutta at that time was famous for its "Baboo Culture", a mixture of English Liberalism, European fin de siecle decadence, Mughal conservatism, and indigenous revivalism, inculcating aspects of socio-moral and political change. At this time the governor asked them to return and settle at Hooghly, ordered them not to build any structure at Sutanuti and asked Charnock to pay a large sum of money for compensation. Answered Why did calcutta rise under british? Intellectually indifferent, spiritually subdued and psychologically weak at that time, India had to adopt with the British authorities. [13], Warren Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice, were both impeached, and were accused by Edmund Burke and afterwards by Thomas Babington Macaulay of committing a judicial murder. Mir Jafar was made the new Nawab, and the British had effectively seized control of Bengal. Older textbooks mention both Calcutta and Bombay as financial centres, with some preferring Calcutta over Bombay. This irritated the new Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daulah, who viewed it as a threat to his sovereignty. His study of Sanskrit with Pandit Ramlochan at Nadiya led him to posit the existence of the Indo-European family of languages. This was accompanied by the development of a culture that fused European philosophies with Indian tradition. Enraged still further when the British granted asylum to one Krishnaballav, who had embezzled money from the dewani of Dhaka, Siraj ud-Daula first attacked and captured Cossimbazar (taking as hostage William Watts and Begum Johnson), and then Calcutta, which fell after a short siege on 20 June 1756, during which the governor and many other officials escaped down the Hooghly River, leaving the remainder of the garrison and the Eurasian population of Calcutta to their fate. 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